I’m a single father of a 5-year-old boy, and I’ve been laid off.

Derek – Fayette County, PA

Unfortunately, like most working class Americans, I've been laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I work at a relatively small home-improvement business as their I.T. and Marketing Manager. Since it is a small business, I have direct access to the owner, who luckily (and surprisingly, as we're on opposite ends of the political spectrum) likes me a lot. He gave me $300 extra dollars in my last paycheck on March 19, which was the last day that I worked. I thought that was very thoughtful of him! I've also filed for unemployment, which should help.

However, the issue with that is, I only worked 32 hours a week, and was only making $10/hr until December, when it went up to $12/hr. So my unemployment benefits will be substantially lower than if I had been making last year what I’m making now. I'm very worried that I will only be making about 35% of that. It's going to be impossible for me to keep up with everything with that big of a cut.

I am also a single father of a 5-year-old boy. I share 50/50 custody of my son with his mother’s parents. I work Monday through Thursday, and take care of him Thursday night through Sunday night. I don’t know where his mother is; she has had nothing to do with him for the past 2 years. Unfortunately, due to what I see as sometimes unfair law when it comes to child support, I still have to pay child support for 100% of the time he is with his grandparents, since they can’t claim additional supportive income. They are both on disability and work under the table to survive. It's just a disaster, and the fear for my son’s future, and the fallout of this economic disaster, is devastating!

The worst part for me, though, is that there have been and will continue to be millions, if not hundreds of millions, or even billions of our fellow human beings who will suffer because of this virus: a lot of them in worse shape than us. In my view, we need to look out for the vulnerable and help in any way that we can. Lord knows that our government will give us the finger as they have for decades, so we have to look out for each other! 

Hopefully this pandemic will wake more people up to the establishment's ineffectiveness, their incompetence, their corruption, their complete apathy, and sometimes even disdain towards the working class!